Now, a Facebook executive has said that they wish they could “hit delete” on the email.

Niamh Sweeney, head of public policy at Facebook Ireland, told a committee of Irish lawmakers on Wednesday that the views expressed by Bosworth do not represent those of the company.

She was pressed on the email after a moderator at Facebook’s Irish contractor, CPL Resources, was filmed by an undercover Channel 4 reporter last month saying that “if you start censoring too much, then people lose interest in the platform.” The moderator added: “It’s all about making money at the end of the day.”

She responded: “I think a lot of us would like to go back and hit delete before he ever managed to send that… His views as expressed in that post absolutely do not represent the views of the company, we’d never stand over them and it was taken up with him at the very highest level by Mr Mark Zuckerberg.”

Sweeney also reiterated previous statements from Bosworth that even he did not believe in what he was writing. “Mr Bosworth, or ‘Boz’ as he is known within the company, has a reputation for posting provocative material to get a conversation going,” she said.